ATP: Give Up the Media Rights Turf War

It’s your own fans, and your own image, that suffer.

by @UnforcedErrorsOfficial

Since professional tennis adopted a player challenge system back in 2008, it has been, with few exceptions, a resounding success. Challenges ensure the right calls are made and throw an extra pinch of strategy into each match – plus, the fans love them, which is far from a foregone conclusion when it comes to rule changes. 

Like line judges and chair umpires, the ATP doesn’t get every call right, and that’s to be expected. But when they biff a no-brainer decision that screws over tennis fans – and, in some cases, the sport’s most passionate fans? That’s the kind of call that warrants further review. 

Here’s the bush-league miscarriage of justice we’re referring to.

Here we have @RazOlsRF, a self-described “Federer fan” and “tennis lover” who has spent hundreds of hours creating highlight videos featuring the stars of this beloved sport (including a supercut of the 1,000 best shots of Fed’s career) and posting them on YouTube. You know, for fun. As a hobby. Just in case other internet type people would be into that kind of thing. To show its appreciation for this free labor and free publicity from a devoted champion of their product, the ATP… forced @RazOIsRF to take those videos down.

Fortunately, the Unforced Errors editorial board recently used the seed money we received from the shadowy venture capitalists who own us now to purchase our very own Hawk-Eye technology, which enables us to review calls like this in real time. We’re making history today with our first-ever Unforced Errors Editorial Board Challenge.

Here’s our challenge:

For the ATP to be so adamant about finding and taking down owned internet footage – in an age where every sport is competing for increasingly distracted viewers consuming media from an ever-expanding universe of outlets – is absurd. These media-savvy fans are using ATP-owned footage for no other purpose than to make the internet a better place for their fellow fans and promote the ATP’s product, again, for free.

But aside from making itself look like a creepy, fun-hating cyberstalker, punishing its most active and online fans, and depriving itself of free publicity, are there other consequences of ATP’s overly protective stance? In Matthew Willis’ excellent article The Modernisation Of Tennis, which provides a data-based assessment of tennis’s popularity and considers ways the sport can more effectively reach a modern fanbase, he argues that the real casualties of this policy are the consumers who are most vital to the sport’s growth: prospective fans.

The situation for curious new fans who can’t, or haven’t yet, watched live tennis, and want to check out some exploratory highlights, is even worse.This sport’s archaic rights-holder agreements mean many classic matches and highlight compilations (the vast majority of which are uploaded from unofficial accounts) are immediately hidden on YouTube due to copyright strikes (despite the fact that other sports associations, such as the NBA, have been claiming monetisation but leaving similar highlights up for years thanks to Google’s Content ID).

Alienating your most passionate fans while also making your sport less accessible to people who might be interested in it, if they could just get their hands on some decent content? Sounds like a #badcall to us! 

It is hard to understand it when sports organizations so plainly stumble their way out of what should be a beautiful spot. At the end of the day, all we are asking is for the ATP to make it as easy as possible for people to consume and spread its sport. That way, we can forever work together to bring tennis into the homes of fans, old and new.

You know what they say about Hawk-Eye: it’s never wrong! We all know what the right call is here. Will the ATP be willing to make it?